Hey everyone! We're continuing our weekly podcast "Trends of chaos and order." This is episode 187. This time, we'll be talking about Syria, Georgia and Russia. The podcast was released in Russian on December 10 and was translated by our volunteers.
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A new reality in the Middle East
As we're preparing the release of this episode, it's already become clear that Assad's regime has fallen in less than two weeks. Bashar al-Assad has either died or fled to somewhere. His family had ruled Syria since 1970.
For over a year now, the Middle East has been in the spotlight of world media, mainly because of what is happening around Israel. Many Muslim figures periodically declare that the Jewish (Zionist *—transl.*) state will be destroyed. Pragmatic Islamists, however, believe as little in the feasibility of "throwing Israel into the sea" as Zyuganov believes in the victory of communism.
Intra-Arab ethno-religious confrontations are rather more heated. It was not so long since the area was colonised by the English and the French, and then occupied by the Ottoman Empire. As a result, the borders of Arab states were, in the 20th century, drawn up in a way that peoples who find it quite difficult to live in peace with one another ended up inside the same countries.
The most dramatic confrontation is between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. The tensions are as heated as tensions were between Catholics and Protestants in Europe a few hundred years ago — and aggravated by the fact that Sunni and Shiite communities are often mixed.
Iran is the citadel of Shiism and the one that guarantees Shiite safety in the region. With this aim, it created the so-called "Iranian Axis". Until recently, it included the Houthis (who control a part of Yemen, where a drawnout civil war is ongoing), a number of groups in Iraq (where the state system is also in ruins) as well as Assad's regime in Syria (the Assad family belongs to the Alawite religious group which is close to Shiism) and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In the 1990s, Iran drew into its orbit the Sunni Palestinian Hamas, a small group by Middle Eastern standards. Support for Hamas gave Iran a stake in "the Muslim world's fight against Israel" — which, as we noted earlier, is far more ritualistic than real.
But come October 2023, and Mr Sinwar, seemingly without consulting his Iranian patrons, attacked Israel with all seriousness. It's likely that Sinwar hoped to draw the entire "Iranian Axis" into the war — which was not prepared and had no such plans.
If Iran was to fully abandon Hamas to the Zionists, it meant losing face. As such, Lebanon's Hezbollah was tasked with terrorising Israel. They didn't seriously want to fight either, but have been shelling Israeli border settlements for the past year. Israel gathered its strength and pretty much ruined Hezbollah.
However, Hezbollah's primary function was never "fighting Israel." It was primarily supporting Shiites in Lebanon itself and the Assad regime in neighbouring Syria. Hezbollah fought on Assad's side in the Syrian civil war of the 2010s, where it was noted for atrocities against Assad's Syrian opponents.
Before Israel's war with Hezbollah, Bashar al-Assad controlled most of Syria's territory. He was holding on thanks to the military support from Russia and Iran-Hezbollah. Several dozen other smaller armies were present in the territory too: sympathetic Kurdish and various kinds of unsympathetic Sunni Islamists.
Bashar al-Assad's popularity was close to zero. Syria's civil war of the 2010s saw almost half a million people die; the country is in chaos, there's political repression against dissidents, poverty. A detail that is little known beyond the Middle East is that one of Assad's regime's main sources of income in recent years had been the drug trade. Bashar al-Assad was a drug lord tougher than many Mexican ones.
North of Syria we find Sunni Turkey. Erdogan has ambitions: if not to annex part of Syria to at least control the country.
As Hezbollah weakened, a combined force of Turkish proxies and remnants of radical Sunnis from Isis and al-Qaeda moved to take over Syria. By smashing Hezbollah, Israel was predicting that Assad would be in trouble – but they didn't think it would happen so fast. At the time of this podcast release, Israel had already pulled troops to its border with Syria. It remains a big question what we can be expecting from the IGIL-al-Qaeda crocodiles.
Part of Syria is now controlled by the Kurds of Rojava, whose social order is influenced by anarchism. This we can only applaude. A note: the Hevale telegram channel has been relaunched — and here you can get anarchist information from Syria in Russian. Subscribe to it! You can also follow the latest Syrian news and analysis from comrades in Rojava in a safer way by subscribing to the channel in Signal. There's also a Telegram channel called "Anarhistskaja bor'ba" (Anarchist Struggle).
What does the fall of Assad's regime imply for Putin? It's a very harsh blow to Iran, Putin's closest ally. According to information available at the time of the podcast, Sunni rebels promised Iran to not slaughter the Alawites. But Syria will no longer be a warehouse for Iranian weapons in the way it was under Assad; the project of imposing Shiism in Syria is over. Before, Iran was able to arm Hezbollah by smuggling weapons to Lebanon via Iraq and Syria. Now, this is becoming impossible.
The international "Iranian axis" is collapsing before our eyes. Iran has internal troubles as well: let's see to what extent international failures will aggravate the problems of the theocratic regime in Tehran itself.
Russian troops are hastily withdrawing from Syria, and a bunch of Russian weapons have been seized by the Turkey-al-Qaeda-IGIL coalition. An unpleasant blow to Putin's ego: Russia has been fighting in Syria since the early 2010s and is now losing its military presence in the Middle East as well as its Russian businesses established in Syria.
Protests in Georgia
While Assad is over in Syria, the protests in Georgia are in full swing. Considering the situation, they should reach their peak by mid-December when the incumbent president's term of office ends. Georgia is being shaken by demonstrations that, among others, anarchists-relocants from Russia are taking part in. It would seem that everything's clear: the ruling "Georgian Dream" party has suspended integration into the EU, is moving closer to the Russian Federation, and has started a fight against LGBT and "foreign agents" *à la* Russia in the 2010s. Georgian cops who are dispersing the demonstrators are getting the Russian-Belarusian schooling...
The author of this podcast hasn't been constantly following the events in Georgia. But after conversations with several political relocants from the Russian Federation living in Georgia, the situation doesn't look so unambigious. Georgia is now experiencing economic growth because the country has become a convenient transit hub between Europe and Asia bypassing the toxic Russia and Iran.
Many Georgians believe that it is good to partner with Europe, but that ties with China should also be developed within the frame of the – new to Georgia – Euro-Asian trade. Georgians, like many other post-Soviet nations, fear a direct confrontation with Putin. At the same time, Russia is a good market for Georgian wine and fruits, and Russians are lucrative tourists.
"Georgian Dream" forms the first Georgian government since Perestroika that does not wage wars. It looks very sensible to rethink the situation with Abkhaz separatis and find some kind of new possibilities for dialogue.
Not so long ago, the situation in Abkhazia was written off as "Russian occupation." But it's enough to search the history of the issue to find that everything started with the desire of post-Perestroika authorities in Georgia to subjugate national minorities. Putin pulled Abkhazia into the sphere of Russian impact ten years after its independence from Georgia. In Abkhazia, Shamil Basayev remains one of the heroes of the struggle for independence, ties with Turkey are preserved, and only recently people through out a president who initiated agreements with Putin that were unfavourable for the Abkhazians.
Many Georgian opposition figures use aggressive anti-Russian rhetoric which also affects political relocants. As we are already seeing in the Baltics: more or less the same beautiful people who make money from murkey schemes surrounding anti-Russian sanctions also teach people who have had to flee Russia to "love Europe" and force them to repent something on the regular.
Georgia was one of the key places that Russians fled to before – and immediately after – the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Now it is becoming increasingly clear why few choose to stay in Georgia.
Meanwhile in Russia
It would be funny if only it wasn't so sad: a universal phrase that is so fitting for a great part of news from Russia. The avalanche of repression and bans continues. Posts on social media or attempts to set fire to railway penny cabinets are punished more severely than murders.
Having defeated the quadrobists and getting close to banning abortion, prohibitionists keep finding new subjects to flagellate. We see new initiatives aimed at banning children's champagne and non-alcoholic beer. Smoking's going that way, too. So is introducing rental licenses for books in the same way as there are for films. Nightclubs witness regular raids.
The authorities clearly support this kind of trash for a reason: to crush any dissent from the get-go. Because there are enough problems in the country: after the Oreshnik (missile *—transl.*) trial, the dollar and euro soared, the 21% (central bank *—transl.*) interest rate makes it increasingly difficult to take business loans while the mortage-construction industry, the most principal component of the Russian economy, is heading for collapse. The country is blatantly short of cops, and there is no money to make the municipal infrastructure look even semi-alright.
Each day of the war against Ukraine exacerbates these problems. How and when we will clean up the Kremlin — following the Syrian, Georgian or any other path — is not yet on the agenda. But it could happen much faster than it might seem.
That's it for today! We're reminding you that in "Trends of chaos and order" participants of Autonomous Action and other authors are giving anarchist evaluations of current events. You can listen to us on Youtube, SoundCloud and other platforms, check out our site on avtonom.org, and subscribe to our social media and newsletter.
The podcast was prepared by Listyev
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